Gallant Waif by Anne Gracie (best ereader manga .TXT) 📕

Controlling her anxiety, Kate sent Millie out to fetch Jack while she put out simple refreshments of wine, brandy and bread and butter. She sent Florence into the drawing-room to light the fire. Florence emerged hurriedly, blushing and giggling. Kate’s lips thinned. She was being a coward, making the girls put up with that. She would have to face Jack’s visitors sometime.

Suddenly she thought of something. She flew upstairs and raced to her room. After rummaging in a large oaken chest she emerged, triumphantly brandishing a white spinster’s cap she had noticed some weeks before. She put it on, carefully tucking in every last curl and tying it firmly under her chin with the tapes provided. She looked at herself in the mirror. Perfect. The cap was dreadfully ugly and much too large for her head. It was embellished with lace, knots of ribbon and a frill which hung almost to her eyelashes. In this, she could face any soldier visitors, secure in the belief that she was unlikely to be recognised. She glanced at her reflection in the mirror and giggled—she almost didn’t recognise herself.

She hurried downstairs, ignored Millie and Florence’s looks of amazement and Martha’s gasp of horror, picked up the tray of refreshments and marched into the drawing-room, her head held high. It had to be—she could not see from under the frill otherwise.

“Brandy—this is more like it.” The tallest gentleman leaped forward from where he had been warming himself at the fire and lifted the decanter and a glass from her tray.

“Ho, you blackguard!” shouted the chubby young man. “Don’t think you are going to make off with that. Here, pour some for me!” He too snatched a glass from the tray and pursued his friend. It occurred to Kate that the two were, as her brothers used to phrase it, a trifle foxed.

The third gentleman sauntered up to her. Kate held her breath. “Allow me,” he said, taking the tray from her grasp and setting it on a nearby table. He glanced briefly at her cap as he straightened up, then followed her gaze to where the other two were carelessly filling their glasses, slopping brandy on to the surface so carefully polished by Kate only that morning.

“You are perfectly right, ma’am.” he said, observing her pursed lips. “I fear that we stayed a trifle too long at the excellent hostelry a short distance from here. My friends are indeed a trifle. . . er… exuberant.”

“So I see,” said Kate dryly.

“And you, ma’am, we have not had the pleasure. Colonel Francis Masterton, late of the 95th Rifles, at your service.” He bowed. “And you are. . .?” He paused.

”Er. . .Kate Farleigh,” mumbled Kate. His lightly uttered words had flustered her badly. The 95th Rifles? He was from the Peninsula. Pray God he knows nothing of me, she thought frantically. And oh, heavens! Why did I tell him my name? I should have changed it. Oh, Lord! She held out her hand automatically, then, remembering, she pulled it back awkwardly. Servants did not shake hands. “I am the housekeeper here.”

“Indeed?” he said on a long note of surprise. She glanced up at him from under the frill. Heavy-lidded grey eyes regarded her shrewdly. “You surprise me, ma’am,” he said, and stunned Kate by reaching for her hand and bowing over it politely, carrying it lightly to his lips.

She flushed and pulled her hand away. “I. . .I will see if Mr Carstairs is available.” Oh, Lord, what did he mean by kissing her hand? Was he mocking her? Did it mean he knew of her? He certainly thought her no servant. Did he think her Jack’s mistress?

“Mr Carstairs is indeed available,” came a deep voice from the doorway. Jack stood there and, by the glint in his vivid blue eyes, Kate knew he had seen the Colonel kiss her hand. She turned to leave. Jack’s hand restrained her.

“Don’t leave us yet, Miss Farleigh,” he said, frowning at her cap. “I’d like you to meet my guests, all of whom have recently returned from battling Boney’s forces on the Peninsula.”

Oh, Lord, Kate thought—all of them? Not just the Colonel?

He turned her to face them. Kate was pale and rigid.

Jack spoke with cold formality. “This is Sir Toby Fenwick and Mr Andrew Lennox, both late of the 14th, the Duchess of York’s Own Light Dragoons, and I gather you’ve just met Colonel Francis Masterton who has, I collect, recently sold out of the 95th Rifles.”

The two younger gentlemen stared at him, surprised.

“Dash it, Jack,” said chubby Sir Toby, “what’s all the formality? Formal introductions to servants now, eh?” He laughed and raised his glass to his lips. “Introduce me to that other little blonde—”

Kate, mortified, tried to pull away from Jack’s hold.

Jack ignored her and spoke with paralysing chill. “Miss Katherine Farleigh is the ward of my maternal grandmother, Lady Cahill. Miss Farleigh and her companion, Mrs Betts, called here on their way to join my grandmother in London, but they took pity on a poor bachelor and kindly offered to assist me to get this house in order. You will have no idea of the enormous debt of gratitude I owe to this lady and her companion.”

One of Colonel Masterton’s mobile brows was raised slightly, but he did not otherwise react. The other two came sheepishly forward under Jack’s flinty gaze and held out their hands.

“Sorry, ma’am,” said lanky Andrew Lennox. “Took you for one of the servants.”

”Er. . .yes, dam—dashed sorry,” mumbled Sir Toby. “Er. . .you’ll have to excuse…er…taken rather too much… er… Delighted to meet you, ma’am.” Pink with embarrassment, he took Kate’s hand in a damp grip and shook it vigorously.

Kate’s fear inflamed her temper. Jack had no right to embarrass her or his guests with this charade, introducing his housekeeper as his grandmother’s ward. It was a deliberate ploy to force her into the role she had told him a dozen times she wanted none of. And he’d discomfited